Yasova’s Encore

Amidst the brewing of my Pharika, God of Affliction deck, I’ve been playing some more with my usual suspects, namely Ojutai and Wydwen. Both of those decks are awesome, and especially the former has been doing quite well recently (who knew Hexproof would be so good on a commander, huh?). All in all, I’m very happy with both of those decks right now. However, the last of my decks, Zegana, wasn’t being played very often, for some reason. I don’t dislike her as a commander, I don’t dislike the deck, and it’s not too weak. That said, Zegana was the one deck I never got around to play in a night, most nights, and in the mean time I had all these cool red cards collecting dust.

The solution to these two problems was to give Zegana a break for some time, and try again with another commander that I used to play when she was new, about a year and a half ago. Back then, I couldn’t quite make her work as I envisioned, and I quickly grew tired of her – but I’ll be damned if I don’t give her another shot. Enter Yasova Dragonclaw:

All of these still hold true to this day, and this time around, I’ve taken the list into a bit of a different direction. Here is a link to my current most up-to-date list: Yasova’s Encore, on TappedOut.net. The list is this time around less reliant on the commander working at maximum efficiency, I’ve played games so far where I’ve been mostly ramping and dropping big dudes for value – a good thing generally. I’ve only played the deck for eight or nine games so far, but I’ve been doing fairly well and even walked away with a couple of wins in my bag.

And I just have to gush for a while about some of the new tech that I’ve added to the deck, that wasn’t in my old list for one reason or another.

Sidisi’s Faithful – This is my new pet card in EDH, and boy am I head-over-heels in love with this one! The Sultai watermark aside, this card was made for Yasova. It’s extremely flexible, let’s looks at three of the common ways to use it in the deck:

As most of you will be aware, I’m all for flexible and modal cards in EDH.

Berserk – Another flexible card that could either be used in conjunction with some of my other creatures to get a big hit in, or as both pump and sacrifice outlet for something Yasova has stolen.

Magmaw, Scourge of Skola Vale – Efficient, cheap sacrifice outlets that didn’t make the final list the last time. Both inexpensive money-wise, both fairly good.

More importantly, all of these cards are fun and they make me happy when I play them – the two most important things cards could do in EDH. It is a casual format after all, and I tend to play better and have better games when I’m actually enjoying what I’m doing. And right now, I really enjoy Yasova.